What Every Search Marketing Campaign Needs To Succeed

Keyword(s): Search Marketing

No matter what kind of industry you work within, the size of your business, or even the type of market you’re looking to serve? We know that you want to create the best possible search marketing strategy in order to grow your business, increase your brand recognition, and of course, outrank your competitors in the search engine result pages. The good news? Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, likely isn’t as complicated as countless articles, guides, and data points would have you believe. The tricky part is staying up to speed with current search engine strategies, as well as the rules created by search engine algorithms. This post is here to help show you how to create a search marketing strategy that sticks.

Mobile Optimization

We know that you’re likely curious as to why optimization for mobile users takes the number-one spot on our list of the best search engine strategies. First of all, more people now get online using their mobile devices than they do on their desktop or laptop computers. This means that, if your campaign isn’t mobile-friendly, you’ve already lost the majority of your market — before you’ve even started. In addition to missing out on most of your potential buyers, your website in general will also be penalized by Google for not being accessible to mobile users. So, not only are you failing to advertise to the largest market, your website will also rank behind those of your competitors in the search engine results. Are you beginning to see why this matters so much? When it comes to mobile-friendliness, we mean that your campaign and/or website loads quickly and completely — without the interruption of pop-up ads or automatic redirects. This will also likely mean that you’ll need to stop using Flash, as it causes mobile sites to load much more slowly. Sometimes, mastering mobile-friendliness can be as simple as increasing the size of your font and buttons. It can also mean taking autocorrect off of forms you have on your website. You can and should also enable the viewport meta tag. This means that the website will learn the size and dimensions of the mobile device, and adjust itself accordingly so that the visitor gets the best possible view.

Create Content You Know Your Users Are Searching For

The biggest rule of search marketing isn’t about finding the right keywords, site optimization, or internal and external linking. While those things are certainly important, what gets people to stay on and come back to your website is the quality and the relevance of the content that’s on it. This means that you need to find out what your target market is looking for as it relates to your brand, products, and services. First of all, try to create as much content as you can. One of the best ways to do this is by starting a blog. If you do this, you’ll have close to 450% more indexed pages than websites that don’t. The more indexed pages you have? The higher you’ll be able to rank in the search engine results — and the more likely that your content will get in front of the right audience. We suggest working with a content management professional team, creating a content calendar, and regularly brainstorming with your team in order to come up with a solid content strategy. You also need to learn what your market wants to read about. You can do this using Google’s auto-complete feature in the search bar. Just type in a few words or phrases relating to your business, and see how Google “fills in the blanks.” This will let you know common questions and topics that your market is looking for.

Content across the Buying Journey

You also need to create content that appeals to each part of the buyer journey. We suggest that you create an SEO strategy template that addresses the different phases of this journey, as well as how what you write about can help your market transition from one phase to the next. Create one piece of content that teaches them about your brand and what you sell, as a kind of brand awareness post. You can write about why you started your brand, your mission statement and values, and even walk them through the community of customers you’ve created. Then, you can write pieces that are really more of “sales pitches.” This should break down the features and finer points of your products and services. You can explain them in great detail, share customer reviews, and talk about how you developed them. The final pieces of content should encourage them to complete the purchase or take another action on your site (like signing up for an e-newsletter, etc.) Make sure that you include a strong call-to-action at the end of these pieces. You should also include a link to your contact page, your social media profiles, and even internal product pages on your site.

Understanding How Keywords Influence Your Search Marketing Strategy

Keywords are what your users type into search engines when they’re trying to find the things you sell or offer. But how do you know which keywords are right for your business? You can use free keyword tools to help you, the autocomplete feature of Google that we mentioned above, or just do independent research. Of course, you can also work with a trusted Internet marketing company to help you. It’s important that you avoid keyword stuffing. No one wants to read an article that’s really just a poorly-disguised attempt to hack the Google Algorithm. Make sure that you take the time to naturally include them in your content. Additionally, consider longtail phrases. This means keywords that are anywhere between three and five words in length. This is especially helpful if you’re trying to tap into your local market. A good list of keywords will always include references to your city, neighborhood, or general service area. You can even try phrases like “near me” or “in my neighborhood.” Above all, make sure that you continually conduct keyword research to stay on top of trends. In other words, what was a top-ranking keywords a few days ago might not be as popular in a month. In order to avoid losing your place in the Google rankings, make sure that you’re always switching things up to stay on top of things.

Where to Put Your Keywords

Now that you know more about the kinds of keywords that your content should include? Let’s talk about where you can put them. First of all, include them in the titles of your blog posts and the headlines that you use to break up your content. That’s probably the most obvious place. But there are tons of other effective areas to place keywords, too. You should include them in descriptions of any video content that you choose to create, as well as in the closed-captions of that video content. You should also include them in what’s known as your meta description. When you head over to Google, your meta description is the brief summary of the specific internal page of your content, so that visitors can decide whether or not they want to click on it. You should also include keywords in your saved image file names. One of the best-kept keyword placement secrets? Include them — along with links back to your website — in your comments signature. You might be surprised by just how much traffic a small step like this can truly bring to your website.

Looking for Professional Search Marketing Help?

We hope that this post has helped you to better understand the foundation of a strong search marketing strategy. In the end, we truly hope that you’ve learned that SEO isn’t as intimidating as you might have initially feared. Remember to focus on optimizing your content for mobile users, creating content that’s genuinely relevant and useful to your users, and always working on your keyword strategy. Of course, we know that even the most capable business people don’t always have enough time to devote to developing and critiquing their SEO strategy. That’s where we can help you. Spend some time on our website to learn more about the kinds of SEO services we offer. When you’re ready to take your marketing plan to the next level? Reach out to us to understand how we’ll work with you to create the perfect plan for your business.